Thank You Steven Colbert
via HuffPo!

Foggo War....

May 6, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Poker, Hookers and Spooks
By MAUREEN DOWD

So much news was popping out all over Washington yesterday, it was hard to decide which way to look.

I felt I had no choice but to go with Dusty Foggo, Top Spook.

There was also the story of a Kennedy cover-up, moonlight car accident and drug abuse. Been there, done that.

And the story of a top U.S. official stuck in the cold war taunting the Russian bear. Been there, done that.

And the story of a delusional secretary of defense being confronted in public for lying about an unpopular war producing a steady stream of body bags. Been there, done that.

But Dusty Foggo? That's a name for a spy that tops Valerie Plame, or even Valerie Flame.

And when you add Dusty to Duke, you've really got something. Dusty was handpicked by Porter Goss in late 2004 to be the No. 3 C.I.A. official, astonishing many agency veterans, according to Newsweek.

Dusty turns out to be a friend of a defense contractor implicated in the federal corruption investigation of the imprisoned Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a former G.O.P. congressman. The contractor, Brent Wilkes, is now entangled in allegations of louche and lewd behavior involving limos, hookers, a poker player with a missing digit from the C.I.A. nicknamed "Nine Fingers," and Watergate hospitality suites where more was offered than just Scotch and pretzels.

Been to the Watergate, haven't done that.

Yesterday, Porter Goss lost the job he never should have had in the first place. After John Negroponte gave Mr. Goss the ax, W. went biking in Beltsville, Md.

When spooks get spiked, W. spins the spokes.

The C.I.A. missed 9/11 and W.M.D., so you'd think President Bush would want a superstar in the job. Instead, he put in a Cheney lackey whose first move was to warn agency employees to get in line, that their job was to "support the administration and its policies." Mr. Goss's last move was to fire a top C.I.A. officer, Mary McCarthy, who was accused of, but denied, leaking the secret C.I.A. prisons story.

Mr. Goss got the job even though the 9/11 commissioners had declared that Congressional oversight of intelligence was "dysfunctional" at a time he ran the House intelligence panel.

He got the job even though he tried to help the vice president suffocate the 9/11 commission. At the C.I.A., he relied on so many cronies, he made Brownie look professional.

The benign but still disturbing explanation for his abrupt termination — given all the home videos that Qaeda terrorists are brazenly sending out — is that he and John "10 Fingers" Negroponte were fighting over access to W., like teenage girls over the prom king. (Wasn't Mr. Negroponte's position created to quell turf battles?)

Even conservatives found yesterday's chain of events suspicious. Bill Kristol said on Fox News, "I think there were either serious disputes or some internal problem at the agency or some scandal conceivably involving an associate of Goss's."

The president is supposed to announce Mr. Goss's successor on Monday. It's clear that the White House is again making policy on the fly.

With all these loony threads, conspiracy theorists are having fun weaving dime-novel scenarios.

After all, Ms. McCarthy, the C.I.A. officer ousted by Porter Goss, worked in the agency's inspector general's office. That office — charged with investigating transgressions by C.I.A. employees, like questionable dealings with defense contractors in hotel rooms, with poker and perhaps even pajama games — is now examining Mr. Foggo's dealings with Mr. Wilkes.

Ms. McCarthy was known to be a supporter of John Kerry, not one of the Bush loyalists who could be counted on to see no evil.

She has been labeled a traitor by the right, just as Ray McGovern, a former C.I.A. analyst who challenges Rummy's veracity, is being Swift-boated as a nut case and partisan.

Mr. McGovern and other disgruntled retired spooks say the C.I.A. has been misused, abused and marginalized by the Bush hawks. Rummy even formed his own C.I.A. within the Pentagon to get the prewar intelligence that he and Dick "Trigger Finger" Cheney wanted to hear.

Are disgusted retired C.I.A. analysts colluding with disgusted retired generals to wreak revenge on Rummy, who ran roughshod over them all? Is W.'s dad sending him a message? Mr. McGovern, oddly enough, was a C.I.A. briefer for Poppy. Or are those just wild Potomac conspiracy theories?

Weirdest of all, Patrick Kennedy's car accident was just a block or so from Mr. Goss's Capitol Hill town house. Coincidence?

Hard to tell, in the Foggo of war.



Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

"Foggo Whore"

"Is there a connection between the Fog o' War and the Foggo Whore?
And what about the price of gas at the pump
and the price of GOSS at the pimp?" By: stevemarvin on May 05, 2006 at 04:26pm HuffPo comments

Sometimes things are just too good...And, tempered by some crazy shit this week, I have to say that there is some glee still bleeding in round the corners of the old girl's mind this TGIF....
I was just asking my Mom...What's next? Necrophilia? Grave robbing? NAMBLA?
I'm having trouble keeping up with how terribly bad all of these people are....Not that I think that prostitution is such a huge sin or whatever people have to do to survive, but people in the government who are in high level security jobs need to be not cavorting round with what may be...um...Criminals. Who knows?...And in the spy movies isn't sex always the weakness? I know it is on Alias.
Yes, I love that show, but alas, I haven't had time to watch it yet this season...The final season.
Well, now we have a little of everything, and every day brings something more. Ah, scandal.....
Did they really think that the Patrick Kennedy Ambien story was gonna trump this if they announced it late enough on Friday? I can hear the phone lines buzzing from the Sunday show booking office all the way from the studios in DC.
I guess that I have nothing new to add except that I'm really glad its Friday and I'm again reassessing things.
I always try to avoid the more personal stuff because I find it all a little boring, but then I suppose some of my "readers" might also be especially bored with my political stuff too...So I'm trying to mix it up on the side of political and social commentary....or...who knows?
Well, this week....Its been rough, I guess.
It began with a booby biopsy from hell on a worrisome lump that turned out to be negative, (just to cut to the results,) but had me thinking statistics all week and not really worried but trying to consider who could even begin to understand my kid and take care of him if something happened to me.
The Colbert tape has been roiling round the blogosphere, and I know it shouldn't mean this much to me, but it is everything I've wanted to say to the President for years, and I'm so happy that someone actually said it. The fact that idiot commentators are so short sighted and out of touch with popular culture and the sentiment of the American people, had me thinking overtime but not really writing things down enough. The other great piece was a version of the Colbert tape which was only a Bush reaction shot video feed, where he is frozen in smirk mode with a little bit of stiff chuckling.
God I hate him!
The media has largely ignored this story in favor of The Bush Twins, which had its moments, I guess, but didn't cut to the bone like Colbert.

Back in the runaround , I found myself in the world of women quite a bit this week in who I ended up talking to and the time of year that we all seem to get back in touch with eachother somehoe...maybe srping? I had lunch with a bunch of friends who have birthdays all around the same time...Girls who I really like alot...And we sat at an outside cafe and ate salad and garlic knobs and discussed life and whats been going on.
I just cant get over how unhappy everyone is lately. Not just with what's going on with the price of gas, but with their relationships and significant others.
This has been a time of discord on the home front all over the place and, for once, I seem to be the only one who is in not such a bad place in the romance department.
I broke up with that last one, on sort of friendly terms, and luckily he was leaving town too, and I was so happy to see him go, and to have some time alone...I'm not looking back at all and I'm feeling OK and like I've got enough going on. People have asked me out and wanted to fix me up, and I've been turning them all down.
Its only recently that I've been feeling more open to getting out and about, and feeling a little lonely here and there, and now I find myself surrounded with people having horrible breakups or who are just unhappy...And I'm the happy one! ...or happier anyway in my everythings- relative state.
I guess it all depends on who you're with and what you expect of other people...Who is nice or mean...How they treat you. Honestly, I hear so many things from people who have been treated really badly, and I've been there...I'm never going back.

The baby birds, Peach and Tweet, are little bundles of happiness and after a bout with some stark sadness from one overworked rude bird person who reminds me of some less stable people I've known (...And , to be fair, I was working up to needle booby time and dealing with some other stuff with my son and at home, so may have been more sensitive than usual.)
Anyway, I just felt like that happy time was sort of upset for me and I didnt want to lose it, at least until they are ld enough to come home....But by the next few days and talking to people I felt better and I also live through alot of stuff and got my results...and next I will have to get through missing the bird people and being used to going there...I'm just a creature of habit, I guess.

Speaking of which, I spent 2 hours waiting for the quite wonderful booby specialist today (she is covering for the booby specialist who is one of the most highly regarded in the area, but who has had to take time off for some bad medical thing that happened to her, so the young sidekick is covering everything alone....) and in this waiting, the women in the waiting room all started to talk. We all told our stories and talked about the scars and pain, and cancer of relatives and ourselves...Of course, my situation was so much less severe than anything I was hearing, so it made me feel much better. I was sure that it was nothing, but I had gone through some strange doctor craziness at another facility, where there was a serious disagreement between 4 different doctors, and I was caught in the middle and confused and alone, so the talk today during the long wait was a great airing of what women have in common and how we really get along under all the crap that the world throws at us. God, some of the women there were really strange. One, I was sure, had been a man, but maybe it was a strange vocal chord. One was an old retired model who was recognizable from her work, but very down to earth and with teenage kids and a regular life, (including big diamonds.... whatever regular life is in Southern Fairfield county!)
One was one of the local librarians, who I recognized...It goes on... I guess I know alot of people around here at this point. But, man, am I lucky to be as healthy as I am. What a reality check it is to sit with a bunch of women like that and see the differences in genetic makeup and how we've lived...and luck. I'm OK.

I saw my birds (happy to see them because I missed yesterday tied up in the luncheon and then the boy's lacrosse,) got some medicine for my ailing son, sort of made his doctor understand me...I think. I also cracked a tough nut today having to do with some family stuff, which is neither here nor there but is about acceptance and reality.

It all made me feel almost sane by the end!

The end of my week long list consisted of frozen mice for the snake, meal worms for the hedgehog and....Finally I was able to find some feminine hygiene products for pup Angelina, who has suddenly got her period again. The last time it lasted 6 weeks and she has to be fixed very soon... (of course the bird dying really threw me , and Angie is just getting stable herself after some pretty serious sickness,) so unless i want to keep doing laundry and running the Scooba which has quickly become one of my favorite things and a lifesaver, I have to put these silly ruffled pants on her, with their little pad inserts which she immediately peed in. Life is strange....
So I'm gonna take this bruised booby to the big bed and dream of birds and their midnight feedings...And my brave Steve Colbert who didn't flinch.

The Opinionator

I actually managed to nap a little today (only to be woken up by the Ned Lamont people calling to ask me to help...and I think I volunteered in my sleep,) after a rather harrowing week that only seemed to let up when I got to see the babies in the late afternoons after the craziness of every day and slepless nights!!
So much is going on in the world, in life, and in my family, but in baby bird land its the height of baby season and, if I thought it was intense before, there are new shipments of those fuzzy things every few days..... its making everyone over there tired and the whole scene into a strange horror movie of open upturned mouths crying the most pathetic buglike raspy cries....its so fantastic! (but I guess I get to go home...like having a human baby round the clock, it has its downside when you cant take off.)
Bird ownership is so much more of a secret society than dog ownership. Im running into quite a few people that I know from...er...around... (and we go through this
where-do-I-know-you-from? dance, which goes from karate, to other sports, to therapist waiting rooms, to schools, to the gym, to co-playdates, to nursery school...and on,) and Im always surprised to find out who has a bird that I never knew about...bird people are pretty great, and birds are pretty intense and intelligent beings.
It seems like most bird people are pretty liberal thinking. Afterall, you cant love parrots and not have a pretty enviornmental viewpoint. I suppose you could, but since Im in a nice little cocoon of liberal blue-state here, Ill just go on with whatever happy thought I'm able to allow myself these days.
So, Im thinking of all those little babies in the nursery tonight and the very tired surrogate over there feeding them all...with their round little grey down covered tummies and harsh little squawky cries...Its really something else.
Above are some update pictures of my babies today. Im thinking of naming the green one Tweet 2, because my son wants to in honor of late beloved Tweet, and naming the yellow one Peach or Peaches. Of course, I havent run that by my son, so it can change...though, since I do the animal care around here (....must remember to order 100 frozen baby mice tomorrow for the snakes!) I think I should be able to name them!! We'll see...I pick my battles these days.
Tomorrow: Gym, birthday lunch with the girls, baby birds, and lacrosse....
I just wanted to see how that looks in print because it is so unlike me...


On to the Colbert story that wont die...and the speech that has my undying admiration....
Why is how he played to the room even a question?
The press and Repug spin is obviously on the room, when the speech was directed at a much wider audience. I wouldnt have minded if Steve just stood there and recited his speech in a flat monotone; these are things that Ive wanted to say to the President and the press for years! If the Democrats dont have the balls to put the crimes of this administration in the record for generations to come, (just so they at least think that we didnt stand by until we were sure that we had the POWER and didnt get any defeats on our record,) at least Steve put this stuff on the pop culture record...which may be more damning in the long run than any airbrushed governmental record thats been redacted and held back until 3 generations from the last known survivor of WW3 comes along! Hell, if there is another terrorist attack or WAR, maybe it will suddenly be unseemly to state this stuff outloud again...give me a break!
OK- this is it: People in the room didnt like it...especially if it was about them...except Scalia, who is always up for a party, hunt, or laugh.
People at home liked it, mostly, except for some who....Mr FK, what have you got to say for yourself?...at least you knew they deserved it and its true....and maybe its all just so much battle and political fatigue at a certain point! Maybe people who spend lots of time on the front lines can't laugh much about this stuff anymore.
But most everyone I know is in awe and loved it.
I laughed out loud but it may have been more a matter of glee at hearing the truthiness on the open airwaves rather than actual comedy chops in action..
Steven Colbert, I love you!!



Chris Suellenthrop
1:54 pm

A Funny Question About Stephen Colbert

The latest divisive national question appears to be, Was Stephen Colbert funny at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday night? Two certainties can be ascertained about Colbert’s performance: The liberal blogosphere loved it, and the people in the room didn’t. (If you didn’t catch it on C-SPAN, YouTube has the video of Colbert’s routine in three parts, here, here and here.) NOTE: Now you can pretty much only get it here. Click on the links below his picture chosing low or hi res.

Patrick Gavin’s evaluation at the D.C. media blog Fishbowl DC is representative of the consensus among the attendees. He grades it “a mediocre performance” by Colbert. Based on the reaction in the room, Gavin suggests, “Next candidate for his ‘Who’s Not Honoring Me Now’ segment will probably be the White House Correspondents’ Association.”

David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, confirms Gavin’s judgment. He writes on his personal blog that while he enjoyed Colbert’s routine, “Practically everyone I later surveyed was sour on his performance.”

Watching from the comfort of home, on the other hand, was University of California, Los Angeles, public policy professor Mark Kleiman, who loved Colbert’s appearance. Kleiman calls it an “astonishing rant” that “hit so near the bone … that it drew few laughs, despite its superlative excellence both as text and as performance.”

But what Kleiman found most notable was Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia’s appreciation of Colbert’s public mockery. Scalia was “laughing hysterically,” Kleiman writes, “not just a polite ha-ha to show that he got the joke and is being a good sport about it, but deep, out-of-control, impossible-to-fake belly-laughs. He is obviously enjoying — really enjoying — a joke at his own expense. No, that doesn’t make up for Bush v. Gore. But it does make Scalia, in this one respect, a better human being than most of us.”

Does that explain the differing reactions? Was the audience in the room uncomfortable with the idea that President Bush didn’t seem to think Colbert was funny? University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse watched from home, and she felt the juxtaposition of comic and target was off-putting:

I love Colbert, but it was a little scary watching him do his “Colbert Report” character outside of his brilliantly comical studio set that frames him as a ridiculous right-wing blowhard. We love the humor in context, but when the targets of the humor are there in the room with him, we can’t dissolve into hilarity. We’re completely distracted by thinking about how the live audience is reacting …

David Frum, a former speechwriter and special assistant to President Bush who calls himself “a huge fan” of “The Colbert Report,” suggests on his National Review blog that, in the presence of an audience of the politicians and reporters who serve as the subjects of his humor, the character of “Stephen Colbert” did not seem as buffoonish as he does on his TV show. The problem, Frum writes, is that Colbert came across as too self-aware:

The dialectic that gives the show his bite is that Colbert and his writers offer a conventional liberal point of view, refracted through the tabloid conservative style of Fox News. The show is most funny when the Colbert character is most unaware that his own words are subverting his supposed right-wing point of view. It is least funny when the show’s liberal substratum rises to the surface, and Colbert loses character and just sounds like … Daily Kos.

Nuestro Himno

Well, what a surprise to find that John Secada sang the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish at Bush's inaguration in 2001. Not only that, Secada's performance of the Anthem was a regular part of the Bush campaign....go figure!
What would Martin Luther King Jr say? Well, here are his words...in Spanish!
The Bush Administration has been happy to embrace immigrants whenever it has been helpful in increasing their power and enhancing their spin, and then just as quick to ignore co-issues such as border security, when it doesnt fit into their plan.
If stemming illegal immigration involves revisiting NAFTA and paying a living wage in America and to outsourced workers, then this mid-term issue ceases to wag the dog.
Since the GOP made i clear that this was going ot be one of their main issues for the midterms, why is it such a worry or surprise when its suddenly a big deal and people are in the streets?


Here is a great link to a higher resolution version of Steven Colbert's speech at the Washington Correspondent's dinner.
What did Kieth Olberman and so many others miss about this speech in their criticism about it as just not being "funny," or appropriate? Besides that I personally found it pretty funny, it wasnt supposed to play to the room....it was supposed to play to the country. This is an event that is televised and has been for years, so to assume that any of the entertainment isnt directed to a wider audience is a little less than authentic. Colbert did, as Jon Stewart said last night, exhibit that he does have a pair of balls-o-licious balls, and he made all of us in the real world proud. I couldnt say it better than The Anonymous Liberal
who is one of the few bloggers that expressed exactly what Ive been saying; the press that states that Colbert flopped or was not well received, is wrapped up in their own little self important world that seems to lack a window out to whats real on the other side of their looking glass. Colbert may have been playing to himself and what he has always wanted to say. He may have been playing to a country that is groaning under the weight of assault on not only the freedoms that we have, but the constitution and structure of the entire government. Or maybe he was just telling the captive audience, all full of the very people who he has been talking about and lampooning for so long, that hes got their number. Who knows? Whatever he was doing, it took an incredible amount of guts, and for that I will always be an admirer.
Its too bad that even Olberman turned out to be someone who is swayed by an overly conservative guest and who didn't get what happened there. I don't think that on a najor network, at 8 PM, you can change the world, and in fact, they have Kieth doing so many silly stories that I sometimes wonder how he stands it at all. He is able to get a little bit of good information through but its all surrounded by the longest sausage in the world and what is happening in the world of Paris Hilton. I know that commentators have to fight for every bit of real infomation that they get to put out there but Kieth is different; hes the guy how has quit before and will quit again. So, with the power that we know he has, I'm wondering why he does some of the things he does. Still, Im gald hes on because its better than 99% of the crap on TV.

Im posting here the transcript of Colbert's speech, as lifted form the OneAmericaCommittee website, which I believe must be run by that cute as a button little John Edwards (someone who I like very much for President in the upcoming elections if Hillary doesnt go and screw it all up for us,).....My only political crush...and I wish he wouldnt do that strange tongue thing when hes speaking....but in general hes such a little cutie!

TRANSCRIPT OF STEPHEN COLBERT'S PRESENTATION AT THE WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS' DINNER:

Here with a special edition of the Colbert report, Stephen Colbert.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen. Before I begin, I've been asked to make an announcement. Whoever parked 14 black bullet proof S.U.V.'S out front, could you please move them. They are blocking in 14 other black bulletproof S.U.V.'S and they need to get out.

On being invited to the prestigious dinner

Wow, wow, what an honor. The White House Correspondents' Dinner. To just sit here, at the same table with my hero, George W. Bush, to be this close to the man. I feel like I'm dreaming. Somebody pinch me. You know what, I'm a pretty sound sleeper, that may not be enough. Somebody shoot me in the face. Is he (Dick Cheney) really not here tonight? The one guy who could have helped.

Reference to NSA Wiretapping

By the way, before I get started, if anybody needs anything at their tables, speak slowly and clearly on into your table numbers and somebody from the N.S.A. will be right over with a cocktail.

Explaining the similarities between Bush & himself

Mark Smith , ladies and gentlemen of the press corps, Madame First Lady, Mr. President, my name is Stephen Colbert and it's my privilege tonight to celebrate our president. We're not so different, he and I. We get it. We're not brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the fact-inista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say I did look it up, and that's not true. That's because you looked it up in a book.

Next time look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works. Every night on my show, The Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, ok? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the No Fact Zone. Fox News, I own the copyright on that term.

Sharing his simple beliefs

I'm a simple man with a simple mind, with a simple set of beliefs that I live by. Number one, I believe in America. I believe it exists. My gut tells me I live there. I feel that it extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and I strongly believe it has 50 states. And I cannot wait to see how "The Washington Post" spins that one tomorrow. I believe in democracy. I believe democracy is our greatest export. At least until China figures out a way to stamp it out in plastic for three cents a unit. In fact, Ambassador [name of the Chinese Ambassador to the United States], welcome, your great country makes our happy meals possible. I said it's a celebration.

On "success" in Iraq

I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.

Accepting Christ as your savior

I believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I believe it is possible -- I saw this guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. It was magical. And though I am a committed Christian, I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be it Hindu, Jewish or Muslim. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe it's yogurt. But I refuse to believe it's not butter. Most of all I believe in this president.

Dissecting the (in)significance of Bush poll numbers

Now, I know there's some polls out there saying this man has a 32% approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in "reality." And reality has a well-known liberal bias.

So, Mr. President, pay no attention to the people that say the glass is half full. 32% means the glass [laughs nervously] -- it's important to set up your jokes properly, sir. Sir pay no attention to the people who say the glass is half empty, because 32% means it's 2/3 empty. There's still some liquid in that glass is my point, but I wouldn't drink it.

The last third is usually backwash.

Folks, my point is that I don't believe this is a low point in this presidency. I believe it is just a lull, before a comeback. I mean, it's like the movie "Rocky." The president is Rocky and Apollo Creed is everything else in the world. It's the 10th round. He's bloodied, his corner man, Mick, who in this case would be the Vice President, and he's yelling "cut me, dick, cut me," and every time he falls he says stay down! Does he stay down? No. Like Rocky he gets back up and in the end he -- actually loses in the first movie. Ok. It doesn't matter.

The point is the heart-warming story of a man who was repeatedly punched in the face. So don't pay attention to the approval ratings that say 68% of Americans disapprove of the job this man is doing. I ask you this, does that not also logically mean that 68% approve of the job he's not doing? Think about it. I haven't.

Classic Bush mockery

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

Now, there may be an energy crisis. This president has a very forward-thinking energy policy. Why do you think he's down on the ranch cutting that brush all the time? He's trying to create an alternative energy source. By 2008 we will have a mesquite powered car.

Bringing in the First Lady

And I just like the guy. He's a good Joe. Obviously loves his wife, calls her his better half. And polls show America agrees. She's a true lady and a wonderful woman. But I just have one beef, ma'am. I'm sorry, but this reading initiative. I've never been a fan of books. I don't trust them. They're all fact, no heart. I mean, they're elitist telling us what is or isn't true, what did or didn't happen. What's Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was built in 1914. If I want to say it was built in 1941, that's my right as an American. I'm with the president, let history decide what did or did not happen.

Ripping apart Bush's self-righteous stubborn attitude

The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday, that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change, this man's beliefs never will.

Taking on the timid, vacillating media

And as excited as I am to be here with the president, I am appalled to be surrounded by the liberal media that is destroying America, with the exception of Fox News. Fox News gives you both sides of every story, the President's side and the Vice President's side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on N.S.A. wiretapping or secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're superdepressing.

And if that's your goal, well, Misery Accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good over tax cuts, W.M.D. intelligence, the effects of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The President makes decisions, he's the decider. The Press Secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction.

Because really, what incentive do these people have to answer your questions, after all? I mean, nothing satisfies you. Everybody asks for personnel changes. So the White House has personnel changes. Then you write they're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. First of all, that is a terrible metaphor. This administration is not sinking. This administration is soaring. If anything, they are rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.

Acknowledging some in the audience

Now, it's not all bad guys out there. Some heroes, Christopher Buckley, Bob Schieffer, Jeff Sacks, Ken Burns. I've interviewed all of them. By the way, Mr. President, thank you for agreeing to be on my show. I was just as shocked as everyone here is, I promise you. How is Tuesday for you? I've got Frank Rich, but we can bump him. And I mean bump him. I know a guy. Say the word.

Harsh jab for the military Generals

See who we've got here tonight. General Moseley, Air Force Chief of Staff. General Peter Pace. They still support Rumsfeld. You guys aren't retired yet, right? Right, they still support Rumsfeld. Look, by the way, I've got a theory about how to handle these retired Generals causing all this trouble: don't let them retire. C'mon, we've got a stop loss program, let's use it on these guys. If you're strong enough to go on one of those pundit shows, you can stand on a bank of computers and order men into battle. C'mon.

Jesse Jackson is here. I had him on the show. Very interesting and challenging interview. You can ask him anything, but he's going to say what he wants, at the pace that he wants.

It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.

Justice Scalia's here. May I be the first to say welcome, sir. You look fantastic. How are you? [Does the F*** You gesture that Scalia was caught doing on camera]

Pointing out McCain's Maverick facade

John McCain is here. John McCain. What a maverick. Somebody find out what fork he used on his salad, because I guarantee you it wasn't a salad fork. He could have used a spoon. There's no predicting him. So wonderful to see you coming back into the republican fold.

I have a summerhouse in South Carolina, look me up when you go to speak at Bob Jones University. So glad you've seen the light.

Having fun with Nagin & Chocolate city

Mayor Nagin is here from New Orleans, the chocolate city. Yeah, give it up. Mayor Nagin, I would like to welcome you to Washington, D.C., The chocolate city with a marshmallow center. And a graham cracker crust of corruption. It's a mallomar is what I'm describing, a seasonal cookie.

Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame

Joe Wilson is here, the most famous husband since Desi Arnez. And of course he brought along his lovely wife Valerie Plame. Oh, my god! Oh, what have I said. I am sorry, Mr. President, I meant to say he brought along his lovely wife, Joe Wilson's wife. Patrick Fitzgerald is not here tonight? Dodged a bullet.

Picking on the Press Secretaries

And we can't forget man of the hour, new Press Secretary, Tony Snow. Secret service name, Snow Job. What a hero, took the second toughest job in government, next to, of course, the ambassador to Iraq. Got some big shoes to fill, Tony. Scott McClellan could say nothing like nobody else. McClellan, eager to retire. Really felt like he needed to spend more time with Andrew Card's children.

Mr. President, I wish you hadn't made the decision so quickly, sir. I was vying for the job. I think I would have made a fabulous press secretary. I have nothing but contempt for these people. I know how to handle these clowns. In fact, sir, I brought along an audition tape and with your indulgence, I'd like to at least give it a shot. So, ladies and gentlemen, my press conference.

[Ends with a video of Colbert as Press Secretary as he is chased away by Helen Thomas]

Sideshow....Again....

ry

Sometimes a girl from Brooklyn just wants to head out to Coney Island for a ride on the wonder wheel with the wheel operator's dogs ,who spend their days in a swinging car, and a corn on the cob from round the corner at Nathans...There's something about an all day boil in sugar water that the super soft frozen corn floats in, all bright yellow and hot... And then the real butter that its dipped in dripping off....There was some lost innocence on the boardwalk there outside the Mermaid Parade, waiting for Bob and his band to finish their short set and come outside so we could drag race the car up and down the wood walk and run from the waves in wet cowboy boots and old Levis...Clumsy Mike the bass player always fell in the water and lost his money and all the guitar pics....
Or even before that when beautiful Mom in her poncho on the winter beach with the dogs running through drifts of garbage, snow, and sand under the boardwalk on those dark days when it was all we could do to get out there in the VW bug and run with the dogs... hair whipping round her face in the wind, wrapped up tight in that old poncho...the winter beach of the freak show world...usually there was at least one arcade open with some skee ball or a tiltable pinball machine...the shady characters smoking cigarettes hanging in the back with a beer in a paper bag....

Back in the grown-up world: Just now,
Teddy Kennedy on Hardball with( asshole liar follow-the-leader ) Chris Matthews said : "I believe that the Star Spangled Banner should be sung in English, but really, this is all just a sideshow."...Thank you Teddy...I might have put it in stronger terms but anything will do at this pathetic point.

Driving my Mom down to the station today we stumbled into a huge but orderly protest at the government center. The sidewalks were full of signs and color and flag carrying immigrants, cheering and waving with signs saying things like "We love America!," and "We need you, you need us!" Mom was grumbling about how they are illegal, which is unclear unless you want to process them all at the Stamford police station, I suppose, but what is clear is that there is nothing to do with all of the illegal and legal immigrants in America right now. The continuing problem of our borders being unsafe is an issue that, if addressed, would go a long way towards lessening the illegal workers problem. A few jail terms for some of the corporate bigshots hiring illegals, and worse, paying less than a living wage to anyone in or out of this country, would be a huge step towards stemming the flow.
If outsourced jobs, that earn huge tax credits for companies moving those jobs out of the country, were regulated so that they also paid a living wage, then why wouldn't people stay in their own country and try to get those jobs?
If America were still spending its money on helping the poor countries of the world instead of being the smallest contributer in the UN to those countries, maybe we would see a difference in what people are fleeing from.
People come here because they can find jobs and send money back home. Its not easy for them and I believe that the people coming here are sacrificing alot and working harder than we can possibly understand. But, to try to control this influx, why not make it harder to send money out of the country?
The most important point of all of this is that THIS IS NOT THE ISSUE! This is, as Teddy Kennedy said, the sideshow....I prefer to call it a freak show at this point.
The ass-backward Bushistas have gone out into the world to fight terrorism where it is, and in so doing has created more people who hate us more and more, as we fight the terror, before it comes home to us and the mushroom cloud becomes a stink bomb....Oh wait, this already stinks....
Obviously there are other cans of worms out there, and I'm sure that W wants to crack open each and every one just to see what comes out, but wouldn't it have made a teeny tiny bit of sense to pull back while we were in Afghanistan supposedly looking for OBL, and maybe try to secure America before running off half cocked, without equipment and only cronies giving support and advice?
The money that has been spent in Iraq, our money, to spread freedom, stop nuclear war, take out Saddam, or whatever is the talking point of the week, could have built enough windmills, solar stations, and biodiesel plants to just about free us from reliance on foreign oil. We could then have rolled up the welcome mat and become alot more selective about our porous borders. The world was on our side back then and everyone would have understood if we took a more selective stance about how we handled immigration and borders. More importantly, we would have been safer. As it is, we are sitting ducks.
The point is not the immigrants who are here. There is no way to round them up and something like that would arguably hurt business. If terrorists are here planning another big 10 year massacre, then we can be sure that this administration has missed the memo...It is unlikely that the dishwasher or maid working on your block is the one, any more than the corn fed white supremacist from the deepest South is buying the fertilizer for his next project. The terrorists will be green card legals or American citizens next time...There is no saying how its gonna go down...But its pretty little compared with the violence and desperation that most of the world is living in all the time, and I don't see where our precious land is more deserving of peace and safety than any other.
Lets have some intelligence in the governmental sense and also in a personal sense. These broad strokes have done nothing for us, and we dont live in a world where we can afford to be exactly what we were, or hoped we were long ago.

The thing is that the crony has cronies who will not release him from his deal with the devil in Saudi;...That hand holding wasn't a joke!
The crony also has cronies who wont want to lose their workers, even to a green card which might buy them minimum wage.
Pay everyone a living wage, tax corporations for jobs sent overseas and regulate the treatment of workers in those outsourced jobs. Allow immigrants to be sponsored in by companies with jobs that "Americans wont do," but regulate those jobs and make them living wage jobs with benefits, before a decision is made about bringing in foreigners.
Bring home our troops and strengthen the borders and shipping ports.
Finally, create programs to teach English to all immigrants regardless of their status and compel English as a prerequisite for whatever status is agreed upon ultimately. Give immigrants programs that help them become part of America rather than having to create their own American niche because the classes are hard to get to and they are afraid about their status. Integrate the first generation...you cant rely on the kids to do it anymore because kids have no hope these days.

But, for Christ's sake, don't forget that Carl Rove is about to be indicted, Bush has appointed one infuriatingly inept piece of shit after another, and people have been killed because of it.... We almost outsourced our ports to the Saudis and that fight was the only one that Bush deemed serious enough to use his, so far unused , veto on...People floated dead in the streets of Louisiana and they are still finding bodies!!
The reasons we went to war were all lies, which have been confirmed as lies with real evidence. The Supreme Court is altered for at least a generation and it has been stacked with judges who want to change the Constitution....Need I go on?

don't buy the spin.
Viva la Revolucion!! No one is being arrested or sent home.... Nor is anyone being given amnesty...Nor did the bad immigrant parents keep their kids out of school today (and, if they did, so what?...You know who you are!! You wanna fight it out?..as a parent, I can say...Who cares??)
Nothing is going to happen about this except maybe a lame-ass bill put through before summer recess that does not do all that much towards giving everyone some sort of slave worker status.

What is happening is that this administration is spinning out of control and they have lost the ability to distract us with the shiny spot on the wall.
Give me the Star Spangled Banner in North Korean for all I care. We are way too young of a country to freeze the footprints of man's migration since the beginning of recorded time...And not in service to this corrupt screwed up bunch of idiots!

Whatever you do, don't get sick!

OK, enough baby bird nonsense. Its Monday and we're back to the issues here.
But first, I'd like to say RIP Blue, small lobster guy who was seemingly enjoying a nice life in the new bigger fish tank. Blue turned up dead today, and I have a feeling that I know what happened, but in any case....RIP Blue! I do believe that I will be getting another Blue pretty soon....maybe today at the Fish Bowl, if my favorite fish guy, Tony, has been fish buying this morning.


Also, Happy Birthday to the Empire State Building. Only 75 years old! It reminds me of how young we are as a country...and when I think that my Grandpa was 21 when they completed it, and then I remember watching the World Trade Center going up in my childhood, as a lighted skeleton at night that was the biggest thing I had ever seen...and so ugly once they got the skin on...oh well.... Time goes so fast and so slowly at the same time...and we are a very young society, so far.

Krugman attacks healthcare, or lack thereof, in todays Times, and its a timely issue for me because it seems like all I do lately is try to deal with Connecticut's Husky program, which is the socialized leave no child behind of health insurance. Well, in Southern Connecticut it seems that pretty much all children who arent particularly rich or even middle class are left behind these days.
I always had private health insurance for my kid because I couldnt add him to mine. The smaller insurance companies around here were always merging and changing, and they were a pain to deal with, but for $140 per month or so, it was OK. I just had to pay up front for everything and get reimbursement later on...usually fighting for it.
Well in one sweeping move a few years ago, a big company, Conseco, bought all but one or two small insurance companies in the area and transferred us all over to their rolls. They then waited a few months and decided to go out of the personal insurance business in favor of big business accounts. There were, at that time, only 2 insurance companies writing health insurance for individuals left and they would not write for anyone who had pre-existing conditions, which we have.....so, we ended up on Husky B.
Husky B is the state's plan for people who have a little money, and they charge us $221 per month for a supposed full plan. The catch is that no doctors in southern Connecticut take it. There is no reimbursement for out of network providers unless you go through a big precertification process, and even then, they will only pay as much as they do. So, a doctor who wouldnt sign up for the plan in the first place is expected to make an exception to see a Husky patient, not for their market rate, or a slightly higher rate, but for the same low rate. After that, I am responsible for the difference in fee. The difference is that if they accepted Husky they would not be able to charge the difference. Only certain medications are covered and a board of nurses seems to sit in judgement of what a doctor might prescribe. The runaround is so incredible that a kid who is sick might be denied medication or care if the parent can't lay the money out right then.
There are no Psychiatrists or Psychologists or Dermatologists or Pediatricians. There are no surgeons and only a couple of hospitals will take it.
Recently, my son had a plantar's wart that spread on his foot while we waited for precertification and it went from a small treatable thing to a bigger thing requiring painful injections. The worst thing was that I assumed that with the precertification that I got the bill would be paid. No such luck! Now Im being billed for $260 and have to wait for a reimbursement that I expect to be in the neighborhood of $70. The original visit would have been $79, plus whatever to snip the thing off.
So, we pay out of pocket for just about everything.
In the very beginning, I was able to convince our Pediatric practice to allow my son onto their closed boards because we had been patients since my son was a baby. Even then, we were given a hard time with the Dr. telling me to go out and get a job with health insurance....sure, Ill do that right away. I wish I had thought of that before. I guess thats why Doctors are so smart, right?
I would have left this practice a long time ago because of some of their beliefs about Lyme disease and the attitude there, but I need them to try to get the all important referrals that lead nowhere.....not to mention school and camp forms.


So, my son needs an operation on both legs, and the surgeon wants to do this operation in early July. I finally got an approval for whatever I can get of his 7 grand fee after 4 months of trying to deal with an enept system that is near impossible to navigate. Husky is run by Blue Cross, Blue Shield, and designed to be as difficult as possible. I know BC/BS and have for years, and this department is set up to be this difficult. I wonder what people do with this....people who have full time jobs or who dont speak english or who dont do well with paperwork.
Well, now that I have the surgeon in place, sort of, it turns out that the hospital has to also be precertified and we are not sure now if we can even get this certification at all because the hospital is in New York (just over the border from Connecticut, but still...) The hospital in Greenwich where he also used to operate and might make an exception for my case, doesnt accept this insurance anymore.
Im less worried about the 7 grand for the surgery than I am about the hospital fees.

When Republican Congressman Shays came to North Stamford to speak at the firehouse and answer some questions, I asked him about the Husky program and what was being done to raise the rates paid to doctors or to compel doctors to take this insurance. He said that it was impossible that there are no providers in Southern Connecticut and then he went on to the next question.
The crowd was all older, white people with money. Since the bus doesnt run regularly at all, especially on Saturdays, the crowd was more of a medicare and/or rich crowd, so the questions passed on to worries about Iraq and wiretapping...and Shays is an idiot, even if he means well. The only heartening thing was that the people were disgusted and many of them said that they would not vote for him even though they were long time supporters. They also said that they would not be able to vote for Lieberman....(so then why are all the CT Dems supporting him???)

So, what do we do? Well, as long as the big business insurance lobby is as strong as it is and unregulated, we have nothing to do but to try to operate within this system.
I found out recently that there is another insurance that I can get for my son because Connecticut has passed a law that doesnt let insurance companies discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. The thing is that only one plan is available and it has a $1500 deductible and costs $450 per month. Considering how much I am paying out of pocket at this point, it might be worth it if the plan actually has providers available. That is the big question. Unfortunately I cant even think of moving until I figure out the surgery thing because this particular plan has been rejected by all Anesthesiologists.
Medicare is a fantastic program, and mainly this is true because the system works, the amounts that doctors can charge is limited but not insanely low, and most doctors take it because all old people have it. It only makes sense to make this program available to everyone and to allow people to buy into it. I would be the first in line for that sort of plan and I would pay whatever was necessary, considering what I am looking at.
Of course people could have secondary insurance to cover the inevitable gaps in coverage, but it would be possile for everyone to be fully covered without it regardless of income. People with more money would pay a regular premium and people with no money would be given it for free, as they are currently with Medicaid. In between there could be different levels...and rich older people should also be charged a premium for Medicare. I cant see that many of them would object if the income level was high enough .
The only thing standing between all of us having the chance to be fully covered for medical care and emergencies and the constant possibility that one big tragedy will ruin us, is the big business insurance lobby and a government that clearly favors big business over it's people.

Here is Krugman's take on this from today's NY Times:

May 1, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Death By Insurance

By PAUL KRUGMAN

For lower-income working Americans, lack of health insurance is quickly becoming the new normal. That's the implication of survey results just released by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan organization that studies health care. The survey found that 41 percent of nonelderly American adults with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000 a year were without health insurance for all or part of 2005. That's up from 28 percent as recently as 2001.

Many of the uninsured reported spending their entire savings on health care and/or that they were having difficulty paying for basic necessities. And most uninsured adults reported cutting corners on medical care to save money — failing to fill prescriptions, skipping medications, going without preventive care.

Here's the other side of the same coin: health insurers' business is lagging, reports The Wall Street Journal, as "rising premiums and medical costs push more of their traditional-employer customers to shun or curtail company health benefits." And some investors are feeling the pain. Aetna's stock price fell sharply last week, on news that its "medical cost ratio" — a term I'll explain in a minute — rose from 77.9 to 79.4.

Taken together, these stories tell the tale of a health care system that's driving a growing number of Americans into financial ruin, and in many cases kills them through lack of basic care. (The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, estimates that lack of health insurance leads to 18,000 unnecessary American deaths — the equivalent of six 9/11's — each year.) Yet this system actually costs more to run than we would spend if we guaranteed health insurance to everyone.

How do we know this? The medical cost ratio is the percentage of insurance premiums paid out to doctors, hospitals and other health care providers. Investors are upset about Aetna's rising ratio, because it leaves less room for profit. But even after the rise in the cost ratio, Aetna spends less than 80 cents of each dollar in health insurance premiums on actually providing medical care. The other 20 cents go into profits, marketing and administrative expenses.

Other private insurers have similar ratios. And here's the thing: most of those 20 cents spent on things other than medical care are unnecessary. Older Americans are covered by Medicare, which doesn't spend large sums on marketing and doesn't devote a lot of resources to screening out people likely to have high medical bills. As a result, Medicare manages to spend about 98 percent of its funds on actual medical care.

What would happen if Medicare was expanded to cover everyone? You might think that the nation would spend more on health care, since this would mean covering 46 million Americans who are currently uninsured. But the uninsured already receive some medical care at public expense — for example, treatment in emergency rooms that would have been both cheaper and more effective if provided in doctors' offices.

And Medicare manages to spend much more of its funds on medicine, as opposed to other things, than private insurers. If you do the math, it becomes clear that covering everyone under Medicare would actually be significantly cheaper than our current system.

And this calculation doesn't even take into account the costs our fragmented system imposes on doctors and hospitals. Benjamin Brewer, a doctor who writes an online column for The Wall Street Journal, recently commented on the excess expenses he incurs trying to deal with 301 different private insurance plans. According to Dr. Brewer, he currently employs two full-time staff members for billing, and his two secretaries spend half their time collecting insurance information. "I suspect," he wrote, "I could go from four people in the paper chase to one with a single-payer system."

Many pundits see red at the words "single-payer system." They think it means low-quality socialized medicine; they start telling horror stories — almost all of them false — about the problems of other countries' health care. Yet there's nothing foreign or exotic about the concept: Medicare is a single-payer system. It's not perfect, it could certainly be improved, but it works.

So here we are. Our current health care system is unraveling. Older Americans are already covered by a national health insurance system; extending that system to cover everyone would save money, reduce financial anxiety and save thousands of American lives every year. Why don't we just do it?

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

Babies!!!

Well, heads may be rolling in the world of Washington party planners, as its being widely reported that the Bushies are not amused
Screw em, I say...get used to it because its all downhill from here!....
Heres the real news:
The babies are 2 days older (I missed seeing them yesterday,) and their little feathers are starting to pop out.
The green one is pretty loud already even though these Green Cheeks are pretty quiet in general, and is chirping alot...maybe hes hungry?...The sweet little yellow is always the fist one to run over to the edge of the tank where their nest is and say hi to whoever is there. He's a very outgoing little thing.

The 60 minutes report on Steve Colbert (...is he everywhere lately?) was fantastic. Im hoping that Crooks and Liars posts some of it because I wasnt together enough to capture it with all my fancy machinery. Oh well.....

Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Hindenburg...

I


















I love Steven Colbert...and true to form, he did his best Bill O'Lielly at the WH Correspondents Dinner last night, and skewered the administration so well that no words are better than his own. Whoever did that booking is probably posting their resume right now on Job Finding Monster dot com, or whatever that is. Reports are that W and Laura scowled their way out of the event right after his presentation. Is it getting a little too hot in the frying pan, Mr President? What comes around, goes around, and youd better bring your raincoat because here it comes...every day for a thousand days, may you be in hell...and may your legacy be that of a fool who tried his best to ruin our country and all it stands for. I'll see you in hell Georgie!
Every day brings a new and delightful array of fun stuff from this best of all possible worlds, except for that floating anxiety that Im having about alot of this stuff not even beginning to be solved in my lifetime. I dont know what kind of world we are leaving to our children, but Im sure that its going to be very different from the one that I grew up in, and the most troubling thing is the lack of hope that seems to infuse every aspect of the future, and the lack of possibility and ability to plan further than maybe high school.
Also today I am celebrating because...FRANK RICH is BACK!!!!!
Im posting it here, below, for all of you non-Times-select readers as a gift on a beautiful spring day.
Im back to laundry and cleaning and baby birding today, and outside work!
I finally watched Brokeback last night and I cried at the end, of course....not because of lost love, because really, isnt life built on a mountain of lost love?...maybe even a brokeback mountain of lost love? (heaven knows its like that around here most of the time these days...)
It was really because of the struggle to know who you are in life and to figure out how you feel about things. The tragedy of Brokeback is that human beings are limited in so many ways, just blindly trying to follow some idea of what is right or the way we should be. I kept thinking that the whole thing was so stupid because it began in the 60's and, even though it was the west, I'm sure that there were possibilities. But the rigid impossibility was inside these guys, and these sorts of tragedies happen every day. The couldnt even talk about th epossibilities until they were old, and by then it was probably too late.
Anyway, it was nice to see the Canada version of Wyoming, and to remember that big sky with mountains stretching out into eternity....If the altitude didnt bother me so much and so many of the people weren't so ignorant, I might still be living out there...not!...but I do miss my little stone house in Livingston and faded neon signs on main street on summer nights when the keno callers opened the doors to let in some air.

Welcome to my new babies, Green Cheek Conure, Tweet 2 perhaps (pic above,) and Yellow Side Green Cheek with no name yet. These guys are from Parrots & Co., here in Stamford, where its baby bird time and everyone is really weary and testy from feeding so many of them day and night! There is something about those round little tummies, half covered with down and the sticks of pre-feathers that brings me back to the brooklyn streets after a hard rain when baby sparrows would fall from their nests, and lay there mostly twisted and dead, but for the one or two that I'd try to save...with usually no luck...and the chicken I hatched from the egg that I picked up at Coney Island Avenue and Avenue U...poor guy didnt make it...But then, I tried...probably did better with rodents, stray cats, and dogs....

Speaking of lost love, losing Tweet 1 was one of the hardest things Ive endured in a long time. I havent written about it here and I dont even know if I can write about it at all ever...but one day he flew to my shoulder, put his little beak in my ear, breathed hard 4 or 5 times and then spiralled down to the floor, spun and died.
Maybe its because he was so young and gave no sign of sickness, maybe its because I had planned for him and wanted a parrot for so many years, and it worked out so much better than I had ever thought it would, as far as how we got along. I guess you cant explain things like this at a time when the news is telling us that the Taliban just beheaded a telecommunications engineer in Afghanistan and we're just waiting for the new totals of soldiers lost, but in my little world here, its been quite a loss. That bird took a little part of me with him when he went...but he was just a bird...and if I cant start to integrate these losses over the years, Im gonna end up with an RIP blog with the longest name in blog history!
Im approaching these new babies carefully and getting 2 so that they have eachother and I have a backup if anything happens....But they are sweet and special.

More on that at some point, and Im taking pictures almost every day, so stay tuned to watch them grow. Name suggestions are welcomed for #2. Currently in the running are Daisy, Ben, and Kitty. There is no way except a DNA test to know their sex, so we can go either way until someone lays an egg.

Meantime, there is no better way to spend 15 minutes than to watch Colbert's video linked above, and then, of course, you have my favorite Times columist here...what more could we need, besides world peace, lots of kids and animals (well behaved, of course,) and candy for all!

April 30, 2006

Op-Ed Columnist

Bush of a Thousand Days

By FRANK RICH

LIKE the hand that suddenly pops out of the grave at the end of "Carrie," the past keeps coming back to haunt the Bush White House. Last week was no exception. No sooner did the Great Decider introduce the Fox News showman anointed to repackage the same old bad decisions than the spotlight shifted back to Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury room, where Karl Rove testified for a fifth time. Nightfall brought the release of an NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll with its record-low numbers for a lame-duck president with a thousand days to go and no way out.

The demons that keep rising up from the past to grab Mr. Bush are the fictional W.M.D. he wielded to take us into Iraq. They stalk him as relentlessly as Banquo's ghost did Macbeth. From that original sin, all else flows. Mr. Rove wouldn't be in jeopardy if the White House hadn't hatched a clumsy plot to cover up its fictions. Mr. Bush's poll numbers wouldn't be in the toilet if American blood was not being spilled daily because of his fictions. By recruiting a practiced Fox News performer to better spin this history, the White House reveals that it has learned nothing. Made-for-TV propaganda propelled the Bush presidency into its quagmire in the first place. At this late date only the truth, the whole and nothing but, can set it free.

All too fittingly, Tony Snow's appointment was announced just before May Day, a red-letter day twice over in the history of the Iraq war. It was on May 1 three years ago that Mr. Bush did his victory jig on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. It was May 1 last year that The Sunday Times of London published the so-called Downing Street memo. These events bracket all that has gone wrong and will keep going wrong for this president until he comes clean.

To mark the third anniversary of the Iraq invasion last month, the White House hyped something called Operation Swarmer, "the largest air assault" since the start of the war, complete with Pentagon-produced video suitable for the evening news. (What the operation actually accomplished as either warfare or P.R. remains a mystery.) It will take nothing less than a replay of D-Day with the original cast to put a happy gloss on tomorrow's anniversary. Looking back at "Mission Accomplished" now is like playing that childhood game of "What's wrong with this picture?" It wasn't just the banner or the "Top Gun" joyride or the declaration of the end of "major combat operations" that was bogus. Everything was fake except the troops.

"We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools," Mr. Bush said on that glorious day. Three years later we know, courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers, that our corrupt, Enron-like Iraq reconstruction effort has yielded at most 20 of those 142 promised hospitals. But we did build a palace for ourselves. The only building project on time and on budget, USA Today reported, is a $592 million embassy complex in the Green Zone on acreage the size of 80 football fields. Symbolically enough, it will have its own water-treatment plant and power generator to provide the basic services that we still have not restored to pre-invasion levels for the poor unwashed Iraqis beyond the American bunker.

These days Mr. Bush seems to be hoping that we'll just forget every falsehood in his "Mission Accomplished" oration. Trying to deflect a citizen's hostile question about prewar intelligence claims, the president asserted at a public forum last month that he had never said "there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein." But on May 1, 2003, as on countless other occasions, he repeatedly made that direct connection. "With those attacks the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States," he intoned then. "And war is what they got." It was typical of the bait-and-switch rhetoric he used to substitute a war of choice against an enemy who did not attack us on 9/11 for the war against the non-Iraqi terrorists who did.

At the time, "Mission Accomplished" was cheered by the Beltway establishment. "This fellow's won a war," the dean of the capital's press corps, David Broder, announced on "Meet the Press" after complimenting the president on the "great sense of authority and command" he exhibited in a flight suit. By contrast, the Washington grandees mostly ignored the Downing Street memo when it was first published in Britain, much as they initially underestimated the import of the Valerie Wilson leak investigation.

The Downing Street memo — minutes of a Tony Blair meeting with senior advisers in July 2002, nearly eight months before the war began — has proved as accurate as "Mission Accomplished" was fantasy. Each week brings new confirmation that the White House, as the head of British intelligence put it, was determined to fix "the intelligence and facts" around its predetermined policy of going to war in Iraq. Today Mr. Bush tries to pass the buck on the missing W.M.D. to "faulty intelligence," but his alibi is springing leaks faster than the White House and the C.I.A. can clamp down on them. We now know the president knew that the intelligence he cherry-picked was faulty — and flogged it anyway to sell us the war.

The latest evidence that Mr. Bush knew that "uranium from Africa" was no slam-dunk when he brandished it in his 2003 State of the Union address was uncovered by The Washington Post: the coordinating council for the 15 American intelligence agencies had already informed the White House that the Niger story had no factual basis and should be dropped. Last Sunday "60 Minutes" augmented this storyline and an earlier scoop by Lisa Myers of NBC News by reporting that the White House had deliberately ignored its most highly placed prewar informant, Saddam's final foreign minister, Naji Sabri, once he sent the word that Saddam's nuclear cupboard was bare.

"There was almost a concern we'd find something that would slow up the war," Tyler Drumheller, a 26-year C.I.A. veteran and an on-camera source for "60 Minutes," said when I interviewed him last week. Since retiring from the C.I.A. in fall 2004, Mr. Drumheller has played an important role in revealing White House chicanery, including its dire hawking of Saddam's mobile biological weapons labs, which turned out to be fictitious. Before Colin Powell's fateful U.N. presentation, Mr. Drumheller conveyed vociferous warnings that the sole human source on these nonexistent W.M.D. labs, an Iraqi émigré known as Curveball, was mentally unstable and a fabricator. "The real tragedy of this," Mr. Drumheller says, "is if they had let the weapons inspectors play out, we could have had a Gulf War I-like coalition, which would have given us the [300,000] to 400,000 troops needed to secure the country after defeating the Iraqi Army."

Mr. Drumheller says that until the White House "comes to grips with why it did this" and stops "propping up the original rationale" for the war, it "will never get out of Iraq." He is right. But the White House clings to its discredited fictions even though their expiration date is fast arriving. There are new Drumhellers seeking out reporters each day. The Fitzgerald investigation continues to yield revelations of administration W.M.D. subterfuge, president-authorized leaks included. Should the Democrats retake either house of Congress in November, their subpoena power will liberate the investigation of the manipulation of prewar intelligence that the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, has stalled for almost two years.

SET against this reality, the debate about Donald Rumsfeld's future is as much of a sideshow as the installation of a slicker Fleischer-McClellan marketer in the White House press room. The defense secretary's catastrophic mistakes in Iraq cannot be undone now, and any successor would still be beholden to the policy set from above. Mr. Rumsfeld is merely a useful, even essential, scapegoat for the hawks in politics and punditland who are now embarrassed to have signed on to this fiasco. For conservative hawks, he's a convenient way to deflect blame from where it most belongs: with the commander in chief. For liberal hawks, attacking Mr. Rumsfeld for his poor execution of the war means never having to say you're sorry for leaping on (and abetting) the blatant propaganda bandwagon that took us there. But their history can't be rewritten any more than Mr. Bush's can: the war's failures were manifestly foretold by the administration's arrogance and haste during the run-up.

A new defense or press secretary changes nothing. The only person who can try to save the administration from itself in Iraq is the president. He can start telling the truth in the narrow window of time he has left and initiate a candid national conversation about our inevitable exit strategy. Or he can wait for events on the ground in Iraq and political realities at home to do it for him.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company